Cruel Summer: Mister Sinister

My history with Mister Sinister begins, as so many of my comics-related tales do, with “The X-Cutioner’s Song.” He was the tertiary villain at best, showing up near the beginning to kidnap Cyclops and Jean Grey, then again at the conclusion, getting bamboozled into released the Legacy Virus on the world. He looked kind of like an evil Colossus and didn’t impress me much; in a crossover where Stryfe was at the top of his game and Apocalypse was also running wild, Mister Sinister seemed like an afterthought with a goofy name.

Then I saw the cliffhanger finale to season one of “X-Men: The Animated Series”—and the version of Sinister intended to fly on a cartoon aimed at a Saturday morning audience comprised primarily of children scared the crap out of me and left a lasting impression.

Following the big battle against the Sentinels, Scott Summers and Jean Grey are chilling on a beach when the visual framing of the scene shifts and we’re now viewing them through a camera lens. The perspective flips and we see a silhouetted figure seated upon a creepy throne of tentacles or something; he leans forward to reveal a pasty-faced ghoul with sunken eyes and a grinning mouthful of yellow, fanged teeth. And then the kicker: a fiendish laugh that sent chills through my young soul and had me cringing through the summer months awaiting new episodes.
Mister Sinister as the foreboding, undefeatable, supremely confident overarching villain of season two, voiced spot-on with hollow menace by Christopher Britton, became my template for the character, and also intrigued me as far as looking into his comic book history more in-depth.

Truth be told, at first, I didn’t find much.

Chris Claremont’s original concept for Mister Sinister as he tells it is pretty cool: the idea was that he was a powerful mutant who had been around for some time but his physical development had stopped around age 11, so in order to be taken seriously as a super villain, he created the Sinister vessel modeled after what a kid would find scary then sent him out into the world. Certainly some potential there as a sort of evil Captain Marvel—the Fawcett/DC version—analog, but for whatever reason, it seems like the writer never got to play him that way.

Instead, Sinister gets kind of dropped into the X-Men mythos in the late 80’s seemingly just because the Marauders needed a boss and Inferno needed a mastermind, set up as an ambiguous and foreboding figure surrounded by mystery with vague ties to Cyclops. In his early appearances, Mister Sinister does seem when you look back on it with Claremont’s original intent in mind the embodiment of what a kid would think of as a scary bad guy, but since his creator only got to really tell one story with him and then departed the books a few years later, the payoff never took place. Instead, Claremont’s successors were left with a villain who almost seemed a parody—with good reason, since, again, he’s meant to be a kid’s conception—but without explanation.

That’s the comic book version of Mister Sinister I met, and not that surprisingly I wrote him off as a product of late 80’s/early 90’s excess where everybody was a shadowy mastermind with too many secrets and ill-defined powers; he worked as a boogeyman on Saturday mornings—again, Claremont’s intent used in a way he probably never conceived—but seemed unnecessary in comics.

However, writers like Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell saw something in Mister Sinister—and also good X-Men villains are kind of few and far between—so they kept bringing him back and giving him more and more connections to our heroes, without ever revealing much about the man himself. It was frustrating, but also admittedly tantalizing, as I would get annoyed that we never knew Sinister’s deal, yet of course this made me want to know his secrets more than ever and gasp whenever he appeared suddenly in an X-Men comics; the guy had presence, I have to say that.

In 1996, nearly a decade after his creation, Sinister—writers had largely dropped the “Mister”—had his origin told in the Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix limited series, written by Peter Milligan with art by John Paul Leon and Klaus Janson.

Interestingly enough, I never got around to reading the book and once again got my Sinister fix from “X-Men: The Animated Series,” the penultimate episode of which was “Descent,” adapting Further Adventures for Saturday morning consumption about a year after it came out in print form.

In both Further Adventures and “Descent,” we learn that Nathaniel Essex was a 19th century scientist obsessed with Darwinism and evolution who performed depraved experiments and eventually made a pact with Apocalypse to grant him power and immortality as Mister Sinister in order to continue his work beyond his natural lifetime. In subsequent years, it would be revealed that Sinister’s obsession with the Summers and Grey bloodlines were born out of twin desires to harvest incredible genetic potential while at the same time creating the ultimate failsafe against his former master—at some point he got on Apocalypse’s bad side—in the form of Nathan Christopher Summers, who would become Cable.

Probably not what Claremont had in mind, but finally this guy had motivation, and one with potential at that.

Sinister was the old Golden Age mad scientist who got lost in his work and exploited by crime bosses done up in a new way for a generation who expected more layers to their villains and for a franchise that thrived on shades of grey. That the unshakeable ego and calm of Sinister could be rattled be Essex’s gnawing and uncontrollable thirst for knowledge was a different paradigm for the X-Men antagonist of the day. You couldn’t bully or intimidate Sinister through physical force or emotional blackmail, but dangle the carrot of information in front of his diamond-adorned forehead and he becomes a junkie jonesing for a fix.

One of the very best Sinister stories I ever read was “Sinister’s List” from 2003’s Weapon X #14 by Frank Tieri and the guy who I suppose may well be the definitive Mister Sinister artist, John Paul Leon. Following up on the revelation that Doctor Windsor, the seemingly kindly scientist helping mutants to escape from Weapon X’s Neverland detention center is in fact Sinister, who is only abducting them from the prison to his lab for dissection, we get a flashback to Essex during World War II, where he worked alongside the Nazis, cloning Namor and observing the Invaders while attempting to glean knowledge for his own ends. It’s the perfect snapshot of Sinister as a man lost in his own pursuit of answers, completely unaware of the world around him save for the raw elements it can provide him. A pretty on-the-nose comparison between Sinister and Josef Mengele is drawn, but Tieri is quick to differentiate as well, with Essex musing on the “wastefulness” of the Nazi agenda and clearly not adhering to any sort of doctrine of racial superiority, instead viewing all people regardless of creed as nothing more than specimens for the “greater good” of scientific inquiry; true to his Darwinist roots, Sinister doesn’t care which race ultimately survives, he just wants to observe it all.

That was one of the very last times Mister Sinister was featured prominently before his demise in 2007’s Messiah Complex crossover. Truthfully, I think it’s impressive the character made it that far—20 years exactly—given the disparity between his creator’s intentions and where he ultimately ended up, but you have to be impressed at how he seemed to succeed in spite of those conflicting directions, thriving in several different roles and drawing impressive work out of multiple creators who at the end of the day really just seemed to want to solve the riddle of who he was and why he did what he did.

In the first issue of X-Men Forever 2, a comic written by none other than Chris Claremont, a mysterious boy appears in an orphanage alongside Cyclops’ son, speaking ominously with a familiar silhouette surrounding him, so two decades later, we may finally get to see where—to end on a fairly awful pun—this Sinister road leads.

Coulda Beens

Writing the other day about Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk’s various attempts to inject new blood into the Marvel Universe during their Web of Spider-Man run got me to thinking about the other various characters to debut in the 90’s (and earlier) heralded as “the next big thing” who either promptly went nowhere or settled comfortably into a role as the occasional guest star or reserve team member.

Comics is of course littered with literally thousands of concepts that never achieved the success their creators intended and you could probably sustain a blog for years on those alone (I’m sure somebody out there does). I can think of a few in particular though that I thought had squandered potential or came along either at the wrong time or wrong place to go all the way (and I’m not just talking about X-Treme); some of these characters have enjoyed a modicum of success, but certainly nowhere near what could have been.

BRONZE TIGER
I’ve spoken of my affection for Richard Dragon before, which runs alongside my thing before Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, and both mostly amount to this: there are guys out there in the DC and Marvel Universes who aren’t particularly well-known or “A-list” but who are better in hand-to-hand combat than their more well-known contemporaries. Same deal goes for Bronze Tiger, but he’s also got the added benefit of a far more interesting and conflicted back story as a former compatriot of Dragon who was captured and brainwashed by Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins, forced to become a killer, actually beat Batman, then broke free and sought redemption as a member of the Suicide Squad. Now there’s enough there for a solo series to run at least a couple arcs in my opinion, but if not, why would “guy who beat Batman” not be enough to at least get the Justice League to read your resume? Yeah, there’s the whole “former assassin” thing, but that just adds to the potential drama.

THUNDERSTRIKE
Once he shed his persona as a substitute Thor and gained his own heroic identity, Eric Masterson had the misfortune of receiving a horribly dated 90’s costume complete with sleeveless leather jacket, pierced ear and pony tail—and I’m convinced this had far more to do with his lack of longevity than anything else. Because when you look at the idea behind Thunderstrike—a “street level” Thor who has the power of a god but walks among mortals and deals with legitimate issues—it’s a solid one that I think could have been made to work given more of a chance. Masterson was also already a pretty well-liked character during his time headlining the main Thor title, so he had something of a built-in fanbase; again, it was just bad timing. Thunderstrike came along at a time when the market was barely supporting one Thor title, let alone ready to propel another to success, and again, little things like the visuals just didn’t earmark the character for long-term success. Nowadays, with the Thor franchise more viable, I think Eric Masterson or Thunderstrike could fill a nice niche role bridging Asgard and Earth.

X-O MANOWAR
I never really followed any Valiant title too religiously, but if I had, I think it would have been X-O Manowar (or Harbinger, but probably X-O Manowar). When you take just a cursory glimpse at the character, he’s Iron Man but with the ultra cool twist of the dude in the armor being a freaking caveman who went into suspended animation for centuries and woke up in our time to become a businessman and super hero with his alien battle armor; he’s Captain America and Iron Man plus elements of Venom and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer all mixed together! The guy also just looked rad, so if his IP is lying around out there somewhere, somebody with some cash and motivation should give it a look.

SPIDER-WOMAN II
While original Spider-Woman Jessica Drew has been the recipient of a tremendous popularity resurgence in recent years, I always thought her successor, Julia Carpenter, had as much if not more going for her and it’s too bad she’s more or less in limbo now. During a period in Avengers lore when most of the female team members got short shrift in the 90’s, Julia was portrayed as professional and confident and I always felt it was a nice moment when the main team shut down the West Coast branch yet invited her to stay on (and then she turned them down). Her being a single mom who was committed to raising her daughter not fully divorced from her costumed career also made her unique in those halcyon days. She’s also got neat psychic web powers plus a dynamite costume, so surely there’s a place for her somewhere outside of Canada?

THE RAY
For years, the second character known as The Ray has coasted on the fact that Joe Quesada originally designed him with an awesome look both powered-up and just in costume to remain at least on the periphery of the DC Universe whether as part of the Justice League, Young Justice or the Freedom Fighters. However, those who followed Ray’s somewhat surprisingly long-lived solo series in the 90’s probably had higher hopes for him to become a breakout star on his own, much as I did. In addition to the great visuals Quesada gave him, Ray also had a nice stretch of character development by Christopher Priest that included major daddy issues with his Golden Age heroic father, a childhood that saw him raised in virtual isolation, and a doomed love life that somehow included a fling with Black Canary. Ray has that nice balance of legacy and uniqueness that I feel like should translate to another shot in the spotlight, or at least a prominent role in one of the two Justice Society books.

STRYFE
Now it may seem somewhat unfair to place Stryfe on this list due to the fact that he was a primary villain in a semi-major X-Men crossover less than a year ago, but nonetheless, the guy was a big-time personal favorite of mine—and many other—as a kid, and I think we all had bigger things mapped out for the Chaos Bringer in our heads. He made such a blockbuster debut in X-Cutioner’s Song (ok, technically he had been around a few years at that point, but just as an ancillary X-Force villain, not a real deal X-Men baddies) that I think we were all pretty sure we had the next Magneto or Apocalypse on our hands. Yeah, his name was a bit corny and he lacked the big picture motivation of the other villains I just mentioned, but Stryfe was a step above the generic schemers populating the X-books at the time based on his deeply personal connections to characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey and the motivation he derived from therein. He was hugely powerful, spoke like an over-the-top lost work of Shakespeare and when rendered right his thousand-angled costume looked bad ass. However, after his big crossover tour de force, he settled back into being just Cable’s personal nemesis, and then died a couple times without much fanfare before fading from collective memory. His return in Messiah War was much-welcomed from where I sat and he was handled perfectly by Duane Swierczynski, Chris Yost and Craig Kyle, but I hope there are more plans for him beyond sitting in an apocalyptic future somewhere, since even if his full potential may never be realized, Stryfe is too good a bad guy to let rot on the vine.

Comics Events That Stick the Landing

It ain’t easy being a comic book writer.

Now I’m not speaking to you as the acclaimed writer of Werewolf By Night: Werewolf By Eve here, but rather as a (I guess) longtime comics professional and longer time comics fan who has seen the process, the struggles and the results up close enough to know how hard these guys and gals work. And among the many mountains these scribes must climb, fewer are more difficult than not only spooling out a big-time event story, but bringing said epic to a satisfying conclusion.

The great challenge of ending an event, particularly in today’s era of everything needing to be bigger, higher stakes and more dangerous is that after spending years building the threat(s) in your tale to be nigh insurmountable, you need to find a way for the good guys to win that’s clever, rewarding and not too clichéd—way easier said than done.

Sure this is a hurdle that folks writing movies, television, novels, etc. also face, but no other medium but comics offers you quite so many tempting tools to fashion obstacles limited only by your own imagination that you will at some point need to put down in an issue or two.

A lot of complaints come flooding in when the solution to foiling the big bad turns out to be basically the equivalent of “fire a bigger energy beam” or “punch a little harder,” but the fact is that if those scenarios are played out with proper skill and drama by a writer in full cognizance of their own creative gifts, they can still kick some major ass.

Other popular go-to outs include the heroic sacrifice or the unexpected cavalry, both of which done right can be perfection and done wrong can bring down the wrath of a furious fanbase. And of course once every so often there’s that wonderful “How did he/she ever think of that?!” out of left field clever endgame that you need to just stand up and applaud.

Here are a few events that earned my standing or sitting ovation with their passion and/or ingenuity.

(And since I kinda need to summarize these endings to explain why I dig them…SPOILERS AHOY!)

THE INFINITY GAUNTLET
What Happened: Thanos unites the six Infinity Gems, becoming nigh omnipotent and defeating not only all of Earth’s heroes, but also the big gun cosmic entities of the Marvel Universe, from Galactus to Eternity. However, after being spurned by Death—the lover whose approval he sought through his actions—because he is now so far above her in station, Thanos becomes distracted enough for his granddaughter, Nebula, to steal the Infinity Gauntlet. In a 180, Thanos teams with longtime foe Adam Warlock and the other good guys to get the Gauntlet back from Nebula.

Why It Rocked: Nobody could defeat Thanos but himself. Literally every other would-be savior, from Captain America on up to Eternity, tried and failed. But as Warlock confronts Thanos about as they prepare to battle Nebula, he knows his enemy’s soul well enough to know that he allowed himself to lose, just as he always does, because deep down he knows he’s not worthy of ultimate power and fears possessing it. It was a pattern writer Jim Starlin had established in prior stories years earlier, so it didn’t come out of nowhere and was a character-building development rather than a complete Deus Ex Machina. I have also always dug the irony that the one thing Thanos always wants, the love of Death, was the one thing he couldn’t have no matter how powerful he was, and that played into his undoing.

THE GOLDEN AGE
What Happened: Adolf Hitler gets his brain transferred into the uber-powerful body of Dynaman, and after the secret gets out, begins laying waste to Washington D.C., brutally murdering any hero who gets in his way. It’s a dog pile of Golden Age DC heroes against the greatest foe they’ve ever faced, but Hawkman, Johnny Quick, Hourman, Starman and even Green Lantern as well as dozens of others prove not-so-up to the task. In the end, a young Captain Comet surprises the exhausted Dynaman and gets kicked in the nuts for his trouble, but gives Liberty Belle an opening to stab the bad guy through the chest with Starman’s Cosmic Rod.

Why It Rocked: The whole “one hero after another takes a go at the unstoppable bad guy” is a timeless trope that James Robinson laid out perfectly in his script and that Paul Smith drew to perfection. The moment where Green Lantern finally shows up when it seems all hope is lost really gets your heart racing—but the fact that he fails is even better. I’m a suck for the folks you least expect being the ones to get the job done in the end, so Captain Comet, who had just debuted in the series a few pages earlier and is a barely known commodity besides, being the guy who makes the difference and then the barely-powered Liberty Belle getting the kill shot just gives you the warm and fuzzies (as much as anything can when you just witnessed a psycho Nazi superman butcher a bunch of beloved heroes).

X-CUTIONER’S SONG
What Happened: Stryfe frames Cable for an assassination attempt on Professor Xavier, kidnaps Cyclops and Jean Grey, and manipulates Apocalypse, Mister Sinister and various others to play them, the X-Men, X-Force and other factions against one another as he seeks mysterious revenge against all parties. Ultimately, Apocalypse saves Professor X’s life, and various members of the X-Men, X-Factor and X-Force head to the moon where Stryfe has Cyclops and Jean held captive and has opened a time portal for unrevealed reasons. Only Cable and Havok are able to breach Stryfe’s force field; after battling Stryfe to a standstill, Cable throws Cyclops a device that allows him to send both men into the portal then collapse it, seemingly killing them and ending the threat.

Why It Rocked: This was the kind of overblown soap opera-on-steroids stuff that was like my crack at age 10. Those climactic panels of Cyclops hesitating to condemn Cable and Stryfe to death as he has connected the dots we as readers had much earlier—that one of the two of them is Nathan, the son he sacrificed and sent to the future years before—while Cable screams at him to push the button is classic. In those days, I was too young to know that dead didn’t mean dead when it came to comics and really the industry had yet to prove that axiom, so this felt like a really big deal and appropriately huge price for the good guys to pay in order to get the win.

ZERO HOUR
What Happened: After Hal Jordan-as-Parallax attempts to recreate the DC Universe from scratch following his destruction of the original timeline, a motley crew of heroes that includes Superman, Kyle Rayner, Green Arrow, Donna Troy, Guy Gardner, The Ray, Damage and others stands as the last hope to stop him. Time guardian Waverider has an elaborate plan that involves getting as close to Parallax as possible to stop him and then feeding enough energy into Damage that he can create a huge explosion that will generate a new “Big Bang” and restore the prior universe as closely as possible. The heroes—along with an eleventh hour assist from The Spectre—are able to distract Hal and his henchman Extant for a period, but Parallax triggers his own endgame when he attempts to kill Damage and ends nailing an alternate reality Batgirl instead. This prompts Hal’s longtime best friend, Green Arrow, to let loose a shaft right into the chest of his weakened buddy, nearly killing him and tossing both he and Kyle Rayner into the timestream just as Waverider’s plan works.

Why It Rocked: As you can tell from the paragraph above, there was a lot of complicated shit going down in this climax, perhaps too much, but Dan Jurgens, who both wrote and drew it, had such a mastery of the important beats as well as the foresight to utilize the huge cast he had at his disposal that I felt it was a great and powerful conclusion to a series that had its ups and downs. I’m always a suck for The Spectre coming in at the last moment and Damage was a great wild card savior, but the tense stare down between Hal and Ollie as Green Arrow makes the hardest shot of his life—and sadly, an ultimately futile and unnecessary one—is just tremendous stuff.

UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED
What Happened: A DC Universe version of the devil himself, Neron, tempts various heroes and villains, empowering many of the latter group in a campaign designed to sow chaos and move different pieces into place so that he can make a power grab by seizing a pure soul and presumably expand his kingdom. Neron surrounds himself with several prominent baddies like Lex Luthor, The Joker, Circe, Doctor Polaris and Abra Kadabra as his inner circle, but also brings The Trickster under his wing, seeing great potential within him. Ultimately, it turns out the soul in question was Captain Marvel’s, and Trickster saves the day and the world by instructing Cap to offer it without asking for anything in return, realizing a completely unselfish deal was the only thing that could defeat Neron.

Why It Rocked: Kudos to Kiel for reminding me of this one. A C-rate Flash villain who had not been relevant in years, Trickster was an absolutely inspired choice to be the guy who brings Neron down, and Mark Waid’s handling of him during this story is nothing short of brilliant. That James Jesse didn’t go on to anywhere near the level of coolness this story demonstrated he had the potential for and ultimately backslid into being a villain again before dying a nearly anonymous death is one of comics’ saddest examples of squandered potential in my view. Not only was this an awesome expectations-defying wrap to a solid story featuring a truly grin-worthy hero turn, the path to victory was quite well-thought-out and layered, a true thinker’s conclusion.

ANNIHILATION
What Happened: Having destroyed the Nova Corps, captured Quasar’s Quantum Bands and conquered huge swaths of the universe with his Negative Zone army, Annihilus now turns his attention to destroying existence, planning to harness Galactus as a weapon after jailing him and utilizing Thanos’ technology. Realizing Annihilus’ plans, Thanos turns against him moments before his own death at the hands of Drax, allowing Moondragon to free the Silver Surfer, who in turn unleashes Galactus and destroys the base of the Annihilation Wave. Annihilus escapes only to find himself confronted by Nova; following a savage battle, Phyla-Vell tips the scales by swiping the Quantum Bands and Nova ends the universal threat by tearing Annihilus’ guts out through his throat.

Why It Rocked: I’m not doing the complexities of Keith Giffen’s ultimate cosmic war story and its twisting, turning plot justice with that write-up, but you get the idea. The various hoops the array of characters had to maneuver their way through in order to get things to a point where Nova could deliver a decisive deathblow made that moment all the more sweeter—and it was already pretty darn sweet. Granted I’m biased here, but Giffen and his cohorts did an incredible job building up Nova as a Luke Skywalker/Rocky Balboa underdog throughout all of Annihilation, so when he disembowels Annihilus from the outside, I dare you not to cheer at the very least on the inside.

Sunday Afternoon Awesome: X-Cutioner's Song Toys

Wandering through Target in the Palisades Mall this past Saturday evening, my friends and I were congesting the aisle containing the actions figures per usual and causing the poor red-shirted employee who wanted to re-stock to wonder why a group of charismatic, handsome 20-somethings would be so interested in a Brave and the Bold: Batman/B'Wana Beast two-pack while their wives and girlfriends looked on impatiently.

Before I could answer this gentleman's inquisitive gestures (which I was not going to do), what should I spy with my little eye but the embodiment of awesome in adorable toy form...

...none other than a friggin' Super Hero Squad X-Cutioner's Song four-pack that included not only Wolverine, Cyclops and Jean Grey (or "Marvel Girl" as the packaging labels her) in their vintage 90's costumes as seen on X-Men: The Animated Series, but a cute and cuddly rendition of the Chaos Bringer, Mr. "Stab His Eyes!" himself, Stryfe! Let's take a closer look...

Before anybody asks (because these pics don't really show it), yes, on the top of the package it does indeed say "X-Cutioner's Song," so I'm not just coining it that because of the character assortment. TJ made the astute observation that this was a curious branding given that likely nobody born in this or last decade has any idea what that title means, but I surely didn't care as learning that we somehow were involved in the production of the this toy in 2009 made me tickled pink to be a Marvel employee.

Here is the long version of what "X-Cutioner's Song" was. The slightly shorter (or maybe longer, we'll see) is that it was a twelve-part crossover between Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor and X-Force that came out in 1992 when I was ten and in the midst of becoming a ginormous X-Men fanatic. Me and my buddy Matt Corley would ride our bikes to the comic shop each week to pick up the newest chapter then race home to take turns reading them (being one year older than Matt and playing the seniority card was awesome in this case).

The gist of the plot is that mysterious X-Force villain Stryfe poses as Cable, whom he is the identical twin of (but we didn't know why at the time), attempts to assassinate Professor X, kidnaps Cyclops and Jean Grey so he can take them to the moon and whine to them about how awful his childhood was, and also manipulates Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister and their various lackeys into assorted tasks that keep the X-Teams preoccupied. My favorite chapter was probably the fourth, where the X-Men and X-Factor hunt down X-Force, who didn't know where Cable was but were presumed guilty accomplices until proven innocent, and the younger team holds their own for a bit before getting demolished.

There were other free-for-all skirmishes throughout the crossover, as the X-Men also scrapped with the Mutant Liberation Front, Dark Riders, and various other henchmen types as well as going up against Apocalypse and then Stryfe himself. I remember one particular issue of X-Factor where Wolverine and Bishop went after Cable in a fight drawn by Jae Lee that at the time I thought was hideous, but looking back from a perspective that is able to tolerate not every art style needing to look like Jim Lee find quite stunning. The melees were broken up nicely by Stryfe's oft-over-the-top Shakespearean soliloquies and laments to Cyclops and Jean about how awful his life was and how it was all their fault. Throughout, obviously the implication was that Stryfe was the grown-up child Cyclops had once sent to the future, but it was never explicitly stated.

X-Cutioner's Song is a story I'm in no great rush to go back and read now, simply because I remember it through such fond childish eyes and would possibly be let down when it doesn't live up to my recollections. However, it was probably the single story that hooked me for certain as a lifelong comics fan, and hokey and bombastic as parts of it were, I will maintain it was fast-paced, well-constructed, and flat-out fun; it wasn't Watchmen, but it wasn't aspiring to be. It also had the artistic talents of the aforementioned Mr. Lee, Andy Kubert, Brandon Peterson and Greg Capullo going for it in tandem with the seasoned writing trio of Peter David, Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell.

Anyways, finding these toys 17 years later, in Super Hero Squad form no less, was a joy for me. Even better, the package and online listing for the product does indeed provide a brief if somewhat inaccurate synopsis of the story (Wolverine wasn't the one who had the necessary power to save Cyclops and Jean on the moon, it was Cable and Havok by virtue of Styfe constructing a forcefield that would only allow in people with Summers and/or Grey DNA; Wolverine didn't do much after tracking down Cable). That this info will not be lost to future generations is a tremendous relief to me.